Can Competitors Harm Your Rankings?

Google has changed up its wording from “There’s almost nothing a competitor can do to harm your ranking or have your site removed from our index.” to this lovely bit of scary wording;

Google works hard to prevent other webmasters from being able to harm your ranking or have your site removed from our index. If you’re concerned about another site linking to yours, we suggest contacting the webmaster of the site in question. Google aggregates and organizes information published on the web; we don’t control the content of these pages.

It’s pretty safe to say competitors can harm your site with links if done right, especially if you can do it yourself….they’re not going to be able to tell. There has yet to be any big and legit sites having a problem with links as it has mostly heen lousy affiliate sites. Most of the people complaining in the webmaster forums and Google’s help section have had not so good sites.

I’m not sure what else to say on this topic other than just focus on building up a real brand with more value to it that a set of links pointing to your site. What does your user want (apps, user engagement, deals, give aways, great content etc)? All of our clients that focused on these aspects have not been touched at all by any of the algorithm changes over the years, so it is possible to do good by Google.

About Ryan Clark

I'm the CEO of Linkbuildr Marketing and the brains behind our branding and blog content. I specialize in effective marketing strategies for hotels, luxury brands and real estate. If your brand is in need of a boost then don't hesitate to contact me for a free proposal. Follow me on
Google+: +Ryan Clark
Twitter: @Linkbuildr on Twitter. You can also come ask me a question on our Facebook Page.

12 Responses to Can Competitors Harm Your Rankings?

Good points. Don’t get so wrapped up in link building. Google wants you to provide good, useful evergreen content that your potential customers actually want. Good for your customers, good for your rankings. Simple.

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very essential to do your own research and write your own contents. Read a
lot and do a lot of brain storming before writing killer contents. People
will visit your blog to read new contents.

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